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[council] Excerpt from ICANN chair's speech at the welcome ceremony today on new gTLD issues



From:    http://sel.icann.org/node/6738


We've obviously just published the third version of the draft applicant
guidebook for new gTLDs.  Immediately, one of our commitments, one of
our promises becomes relevant, because we have committed that prior to
implementing, we will adequately address competition, consumer
protection, security, stability and resiliency, malicious abuse
processes, sovereignty concerns, and rights protection.  These are the
issues that have emerged as the result of the introduction discussions.


And so we are working through those issues this week, taking further
advantage of the huge efforts the IRT -- let me thank that group again
-- the huge efforts that the IRT put into proposing a solution for that
last issue of rights protection.

We will also be discussing the report the board commissioned into
investigating the impact of simultaneously adding DNSSEC, new TLDs, and
IPv6 to the root.  Now, the root scaling work so far has identified that
implementing DNSSEC in the root will lead to a sudden increase in the
load on the root servers because each DNS inquiry will involve more data
returned from the root servers.  

And so there are now calls emerging from the technical community to
implement this change first:  Wait for the system to stabilize and then
measure the impact before adding many new TLDs to the root.

The board is waiting for final input from RSSAC and SSAC on the work
that has to be done, but it seems agreed that there is a great deal of
room in the system for adaptation, particularly over time, and the issue
is not so much to watch for or try and create hard limits on capacity.
It's the possibility of too much change too fast.  So it's important for
us to look for the signs of danger in the system and have procedures in
place to do something effective when we detect those signs.

And finally, let me mention an innovation in our bottom-up policy
development.  We are trialing a new format in relation to the vertical
integration argument in relation to new gTLDs, so we have two prominent
groups of protagonists on opposite sides of this particular debate, and
we've agreed on a debate-style format in which each team will make an
opening statement and then alternately present on a series of agreed
points of difference with a closing statement by each.

There will be questions and answers from the floor, and at the end
possibly even a straw poll for the audience to indicate who it thinks
has put the best case.  So I hope to see you there as we trial these new
ways of getting to the bottom of policy development processes and making
sure that the board gets the best advice about the community reaction.
So I hope to see you there at 3:00 in the Crystal A for that one.